Online privacy has become a huge deal in the past couple of months and thanks to Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica story. There is also the General Data Protection Regulation which is a new lay in the European Union that seeks to strengthen data protection of individuals in the region.
It seems Apple is following this trend by launching a new website that will allow Apple users to download everything that is associated with your account. The data and privacy website allows you to download such information like your iCloud data, App Store activity, Apple ID info and even Applecare history.
You can even manage your data within this website, where you can correct any incorrect data that Apple has of you, or even go a step ahead and delete your account entirely.
The announcement of this new tool is in line with the requirements for GDPR and sadly this is only available for European Union accounts.
If you are in this region and you’d like to download a copy, just login to privacy.apple.com, select the ‘get started’ link under ‘obtain a copy of your data’ and then tick the boxes of the categories of data you’d want to download. Afterwards, you’d be required to choose your preferred maximum file size, since the download might be quite large so that the downloads can be separated in chunks. You will get an email when the files are available for download.
In my location, I don’t have the Obtain a copy of your data and Deactivate your account option. Deactivate option will stop Apple from processing info related to your Apple ID like accessing store purchases, accessing iCloud or iCloud services.
Fortunately, this feature will be rolled out worldwide in the coming months, which means we would all be able to take control of our data being stored and used by Apple in the future.
